Nextcloud, Seafile, OpenCloud or ownCloud: who owns your file storage

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Comparisons of self-hosted file storage usually end at feature lists and sync speed. Both are measurable and both are secondary to the decision.

The reason companies look at these systems in the first place is sovereignty. And for that, one question matters that appears in no feature list: who owns the software, and where do the people who write it work?

In this product field the answer is unusually eventful. The same codebase has been forked twice, and both times the developers left.

All details from the repositories and licence files, as of 31 August 2026.

Table of contents

• Forked twice, both times without the developers
• The candidates at a glance
• Nextcloud
• Seafile
• OpenCloud
• ownCloud
• Where the data sits and why it matters
• Which one for which situation
• What a comparison does not answer
• How we approach this at WZ-IT
• Further guides

Forked twice, both times without the developers

The history explains today's field better than any feature table.

Twice the same event: the code stayed, the people left. The first time produced Nextcloud, today the largest project in the field. The second produced OpenCloud, run by the Berlin-based Heinlein Group, which also operates mailbox.org and OpenTalk.

For a decision this implies no verdict, but it does imply a question worth asking: who develops the software I intend to still be running in five years, and on whose behalf?

The candidates at a glance

Figures from the public repositories, as of 31 August 2026.

All four are actively developed. None of them is in retreat.

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is the largest and most feature-rich project in the field. The server is under AGPL-3.0, with no user limit and no feature gate in the free edition. What is paid for is support, operational assistance and additional features for very large installations.

What comes with it goes well beyond files: calendars, contacts, video calls, document editing through Collabora or OnlyOffice, forms, tasks, and an app catalogue with several hundred extensions.

That is both strength and weakness. Anyone looking for a collaboration platform finds here the most complete open-source answer. Anyone who only wants to sync files runs considerably more software than the task requires, with corresponding effort in updates and hardening. What a major version change involves in practice is shown in the post on the Nextcloud 35 upgrade.

Stewardship sits with Nextcloud GmbH in Germany. For procurement with a sovereignty requirement, that is the most straightforward case in the field.

Seafile

Seafile takes a different approach and is the most specialised of the four: it synchronises files, and does so faster than the competition, particularly with many small files.

The reason lies in the storage layout. Seafile does not store files as ordinary files but splits them into blocks and manages them in its own format, much as Git does with source code. That makes comparisons fast and storage efficient.

The licence boundary is the sharpest in this comparison. The Community Edition is under GPLv2 with an additional permission for linking OpenSSL. The Professional Edition is proprietary and usable for up to three users without a licence file.

The Professional Edition holds, among other things:

• full-text search inside documents
• fine-grained permissions on folders and subfolders
• LDAP and Active Directory integration
• department and organisation management

The third point is the decisive one for companies. Anyone who does not want to maintain accounts twice from twenty users up needs the paid edition. With the other three candidates, directory integration is in the free edition.

Stewardship sits with Seafile Ltd., originating in China. Whether that matters for your procurement is a question of your requirements, not a technical one.

OpenCloud

OpenCloud is the youngest candidate and the most interesting case. It is a direct fork of ownCloud Infinite Scale, created in January 2025, built by the same roughly 15 developers who had previously developed Infinite Scale at ownCloud.

It is under Apache-2.0, the most permissive licence in the comparison, and written in Go rather than PHP. That shows in operation: lower resource requirements and a simpler architecture than the PHP systems.

It is run by OpenCloud GmbH of the Heinlein Group in Berlin, which has operated open-source infrastructure for thirty years, including mailbox.org and OpenTalk.

The reservation is its age. A project from 2025 has fewer operating years behind it than Nextcloud or Seafile, and the feature set is deliberately narrower. Anyone needing a collaboration platform will not find one here. Anyone looking for a modern file store with German stewardship finds the most direct route.

ownCloud

ownCloud is the origin of the field and today its most difficult case.

The software continues to be developed, the repositories are updated, and Kiteworks has set up an Open Source Program Office for ownCloud and retired the contributor licence agreement. Those are steps in the right direction.

Two points remain and belong on the table:

The ownership question. Kiteworks is a US company. For procurement whose very reason is independence from US vendors, that contradicts the reason for the procurement, regardless of the quality of the software.

The team's departure. The developers who built Infinite Scale have worked on OpenCloud since January 2025. Organisational structures cannot replace that.

For existing installations this creates no urgency. For new decisions it is the point at which most companies reach for OpenCloud or Nextcloud.

Where the data sits and why it matters

One difference rarely appears in comparisons and is the most important in an emergency: can you reach your data without the application?

This is not an argument against Seafile, whose speed comes from exactly that layout. It is an argument for aligning the backup strategy with it: with Seafile the backup has to run through the intended tools; a filesystem snapshot alone does not suffice.

What a backup that accounts for this difference looks like we described in the comparison of backup tools.

Which one for which situation

What a comparison does not answer

Three points decide success and appear in no table:

Migrating what exists. Copying files is the easy part. Shares, permissions, version history and external links are the laborious part, and they transfer with varying success depending on the source.

Employee behaviour. File storage that is slower than the tool it replaces gets bypassed. Then files sit on personal accounts again, and sovereignty is won on paper and lost in practice.

The restore. Not the backup, the restore. Anyone who has never checked whether a single folder can be recovered with its permissions has a backup of unknown value.

Still unsure which tool fits? In the collaboration selection you try the candidates for files, chat and video as demo instances and receive a reasoned decision paper. From €3,900 excl. VAT, credited against the rollout.

How we approach this at WZ-IT

We start with the usage question, not the product question: what should staff do with it, and what do they do today instead. That usually settles whether a collaboration platform is needed or file storage suffices.

We have operated Nextcloud for clients for years, including integration with Keycloak or Authentik and document editing through Collabora. Where a lean store is wanted, we look at OpenCloud.

Migration at our end includes a restore test before the old system is switched off. A migration counts as finished only once a recovery has worked at least once.

Further guides

• Nextcloud vs. SharePoint - the open-source platform weighed against Microsoft 365
• WeTransfer versus Nextcloud - exchanging files with external parties
• Nextcloud at WZ-IT - architecture, integration and operations
• restic, Borg or Kopia - backup for file storage
• Open-source licence changes - why stewardship is an operational question
• Managed open source - operating open-source applications

Unsure which solution fits your user count? We look at the current state, assess the candidates and support the migration including a restore test. Book a call

Sources

• Nextcloud Server on GitHub
• Seafile on GitHub
• Seafile: licence text of the Community Edition
• Seafile: pricing and editions
• OpenCloud on GitHub
• ownCloud Infinite Scale on GitHub
• Nextcloud on the Kiteworks acquisition of ownCloud and Dracoon
• Kiteworks on the Open Source Program Office for ownCloud